The Honda's Wedding, my first Japanese Wedding Party

I really hadn’t done much today. In the morning all I did was sleep and get ready for the wedding. I had bought them a nice card from the Sogo department store at Yokohama station, and took a little time to prepare it the right way. It took some time to put the details in there. It was a nice little card that had a box and a heart inside of it. The heart folded out to have 4 pieces which I used for the main message of the card. Since it was split into 4 pieces I dedicated the top to a message for both of them in Japanese, then the sides to each one of them, meaning one for the bride and one for the groom and a closing message on the last piece. I added more to the main part of the card, just in case they didn’t open the box that said open. So I think I got all the bases covered for the card. But if they didn’t take a look at the box, I’ll let them know about it later. Anyways, I left my house later than I had planned to.

It didn’t take that long to get there than I expected. But it did take a long time. About 2.5 hours since I took a route that was a little out of the way. I went the way to get to school, and then took the appropriate trains from there. I ran into another teacher on the way to go there. I was effective in getting her and me to miss the train that we needed to take to get to the right train station. She jumped on the right train and I told her that it was the wrong train, so she got off and looked at the map and determined that she was on the right train. I agreed, but it was too late since the train had just left. But the next train wasn’t too long away. Anyways, it allowed us to talk a little, even though she only speaks Japanese and I only spoke in English and we completely didn’t understand each other, at all. It was fun at least. This is the teacher that sits next to me and rarely talks to me. She’s shy with her English.

We finally arrived at the station and then met up with another teacher at the 7-11 near the Shirokanedai station on the Namboku line. We were a little early for the party, but I figure it’s better to be early than to be late for a wedding. We were one of the first people there for the “2nd party.” In Japanese weddings, they have two parties to celebrate. The first party is more formal and the people involved are usually families and senior people in companies. So I got invited to the second party, which is more relaxed and fun where it’s a dinner type of party that is with friends and co-workers. It was fun I felt. I was sitting with all the male teachers and a former English teacher at the school. They are interesting people, to say the least and they love to drink too. One of the teachers that is normally strict and intimidating is much more fun when he’s had a lot to drink. I mean he changes his demeanor so much that he’s practically a different person and quite funny too. They did a few games, and we watched a couple videos one from the Blue Point restaurant and one that was made for the couple. It was a nice video of the couple before they were getting married and gave everyone a glimpse into their lives and all the things that they’ve been through in their lives. It was nice and very interesting to see.

After the party ended, I left with the last group of people to leave the restaurant. They were the teachers that were helping to run and organize the event. They are the teachers that I normally hang out and talk to. They had showed me something cool that I didn’t know until today. I finally got the meaning of the 2 mai – which means 2 pieces, on the ticket gates. It means that you can use 2 tickets on the machine at one time. That means I could buy one subway ticket from some point off of the line and combine it with my passnet or commuter pass and it will calculate both at the same time. That’s so convenient and so cool that it could do it that fast too. Very cool indeed. I decided to finish paying up all my bills that day too. It looked as if my neighbors were having a party of some sort since there were a lot of cars outside and a lot of noise. Sounds like they were having a lot of fun. When I finished paying my bills, I came back and there was Reiko and Nao, they were just coming to join the party, while I just went back home.